Eurydice and Orpheus are about to get married. They are deeply in love, though Orpheus’ love of music can sometimes drive him to distraction, even as the couple tumble around in bed. Eurydice has recently lost her father and her marriage to Orpheus might be the thing to snap her out of her grief. On the night of the wedding, Eurydice leaves the party and meets a man who says he has a letter from her father. Drawn by the longing of one last missive from her dad, she follows the stranger to his apartment, where he attempts to seduce her. She grabs the letter, runs off and falls down the stairwell to her death.
The myth of
Orpheus and Eurydice is revisited over and over because it’s a rich text about
idealised love: Orpheus descending to the underworld to rescue the love of his
life through the use of his perfect voice to convince the Lord of the
Underworld to let them leave. The condition, he must lead her out without
looking back, is the simplest of narrative tricks to lead to tragedy.
When I saw Hadestown
last year, a musical by Anais Mitchell, there were gasps throughout the
audience when Orpheus turned around – even as the show warned us over and over
again that the ending would remain the same.
Ruhl’s
version centres Eurydice with the key addition of the character’s father, giving
her a life outside of her relationship with Orpheus – and the one reason she
may not want to leave the underworld. Ruhl wrote this play as a way to deal
with the grief of losing her dad and that is palpable. With Orpheus’ love of
music depicted as closer to obsession here, Eurydice’s relationship with her
father is much less complicated.
The language
of this work is heightened; the ostensibly real-world conversations between the
two lovers are more like poetry. Once Eurydice descends into Hell, she must
contend with not remembering her life after passing through the river Lethe.
Her father is there to welcome her, but so is the Lord of the Underworld and
three talking stones.
Melbourne
Shakespeare Company’s production, under the expert guidance of director Gary
Abraham, twist the concrete images of reality into tableaux of the absurd and the
surreal. Nathan Burmeister’s set stretches the width of Fortyfive Downstairs’
space: the lovers’ apartment is filled with instruments, but outside that box, dirt
and bark are strewn across the ground. An old phone box stands sentinel, a vortex
for otherworldly characters to appear from. A chest freezer stands at the other end, containing more than just drinks and ice.
Spencer Herd’s
lighting design throws suggestive shadows and alluring imagery. Curtains of
plastic act as both the skin between worlds and as the river that purges people
of their memories. Grace Ferguson’s compositions are central to the piece,
because of Orpheus’ penchant for music while also adding another layer of mood
and darkness to the tragedy.
Aisha
Aidara captures a strength in her portrayal of Eurydice, while embracing how
completely untethered from reality the character becomes. Aidara finds a way to
portray an absolute terror at her situation, while also showing us the deep
affection she has for her father and her distant lover. Tomáš Kantor’s Orpheus is
deliberately off-putting as a muso who likes his art more than anything else,
but his beautiful singing voice is deployed to great effect throughout.
Devon
Braithwaite’s Lord of the Underworld is a lascivious lothario early on, then a
tap- dancing nutter on home soil. The performance is perfectly unhinged and
Braithwaite is a delight every time he’s on stage. John Voce’s performance as
Eurydice’s father is grounded and believable, or as much as it can be, given
the context. His earliest scene of trying to deliver a letter from the beyond
was very moving.
Abrahams
has called on elements from a couple of his earlier works: finding the mythic
in the mundane in Iphigenia in Splott and combining the real with the
supernatural in Yentl. His ability to create new worlds that are emotionally
weighty and thrillingly unreal is unparalleled.
I know Ruhl
from her more commercial hits like Dead Man’s Cell Phone and In the
Next Room (or The Vibrator Play), both of which I remember as hilarious but
without much substance. Eurydice
is one of her early works, and it’s much more daring. Making
Orpheus something for Eurydice to push against rather than be head-over-heels
in love with is interesting. But does the inevitable ending of the myth really
work in this reconfiguration? It’s less pure. Messier.
I recently
read Zoe Terakes’ short story, Eurydice (And Orpheus, sort of), a queer retelling, which turns the myth on its head. Their story casts Orpheus as completely irredeemable and
allows Eurydice to find her groove in the underworld. There’s no need for her
to be saved by a musician bro, at all. A bold take on the characters
that doesn’t feel beholden to anything we know.
Eurydice isn't quite that daring, but it is delightfully odd and completely
transfixing. I was only occasionally moved by the pathos, but I was fully
captivated by the strangeness of the whole experience.
- Keith Gow, Theatre First
Melbourne Shakespeare Company's Eurydice is playing at Fortyfive Downstairs until June 14
Photos: Nick Mick Pics
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